home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- 5 November 1990
-
- COMPRESF Version 1.10
-
- Copyright 1990 by Rufus S. Hendon. All rights reserved.
-
-
- The Hewlett-Packard LaserJet III and IIID printers will accept downloaded
- bitmap fonts in a particular compressed format. I am informed that such
- compressed fonts can also be used with the IIP. A compressed font takes up
- less room on the hard disk or floppy disk on which it is stored, and since it
- is downloaded to the printer in compressed form no time is required to
- uncompress it before downloading and the downloading takes less time because of
- the smaller size of the font. The font also uses less of the memory of the
- printer, since it is stored in compressed form. Limited trials suggest that
- the percentage by which the size of the font is reduced increases with the size
- of the font, ranging from 20% for small fonts to 88% for a 122-point font with
- the DeskTop symbol set, the bulk of which was reduced from 1,562,906 bytes to
- 181,739 bytes. "Reverse" or "white" fonts, such as those produced by my
- WHITEFNT program, especially benefit from compression; a 122-point white font
- with a limited character set of 25 characters went from 279,395 bytes to
- 15,664 bytes, a reduction of 94%.
-
- The LaserJet III compression method (as I will call it) doesn't achieve as
- great a reduction in the size of the font as is produced by other, more
- sophisticated techniques. However, with any other method downloading involves
- first expanding the font to its original size and then transmitting the
- uncompressed version to the printer, where the font is stored in uncompressed
- form. Fonts compressed by the LaserJet III method, on the other hand, don't
- have to be expanded; they are downloaded in compressed form, and the printer
- stores them in that form.
-
- COMPRESF applies the LaserJet III compression method to a bitmap font.
- (It won't work on scalable soft fonts.) It requires two arguments. The first
- is the name of the file containing the font to be compressed. The second
- argument is the name to be given to the file into which COMPRESF will write
- the compressed font. The names of the two files must be different. Here is
- a sample invocation:
-
- compresf em240ljj.sfp em240ljj.cfp
-
- This command causes the font stored in EM240LJJ.SFP (a 24-point Zapf Dingbats
- font generated by Bitstream Fontware) to be compressed, with the resulting
- compressed font written into EM240LJJ.CFP.
-
- Compressed fonts created by COMPRESF can be downloaded to the LaserJet III
- with the aid of whatever downloading software you are accustomed to using.
-
- Please note that compressed fonts can be used only with printers such as
- the LaserJet III that implement PCL 5. They won't work with printers that
- implement lower PCL levels, such as the LaserJet Series II.
-
- ===============================================================================
-
- The program COMPRESF.EXE and this document are copyrighted by the author.
- You may use the program without charge. You may also distribute the program to
- others, provided that you do not receive any payment, fee, donation, handling
- charge, or remuneration in any other form for doing so.
-
- There is no warranty of any kind, and the copyright owner is not liable
- for damages of any kind resulting from the use of this software. By using
- this free software, you agree to this.